Patient Safety

Patient safety is one of the nation's most pressing health care challenges. This page includes educational information to help you receive safer health care from providers in all types of health care settings. The Web links that follow provide information on important patient safety subjects, including ways to prevent medical errors; identify high-quality physicians, hospitals and nursing homes; patient safety guidelines; and assessment tools.

Protect Yourself From Prescription Errors
WebMD Public Information with the Department of Health and Human Services

NCQA's Recognized Physician Directory allows you to identify some physicians in your area who demonstrate a high level of performance in providing care for specialties.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is a division of the U.S. Health and Human Services Administration, which supports research designed to improve the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care for Americans.

20 Tips to Help Prevent Medical Errors - Click on this link to read a patient fact sheet prepared by AHRQ on understanding medical errors and simple, practical ways for patients to actively prevent medical errors.

The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) site provides national and regional information and statistics on hospital care. HCUP is sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This site allows you to research hospital utilization, access, charges, quality and outcomes, and more.

New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH), Center for Consumer Health Care Information, Patient Safety Center - This NYS site has a wide range of information, including patient safety reports, clinical care guidelines, facts sheets, and quality levels of specific providers, hospitals, and nursing homes.

New York State Physician Profile provides detailed information on a provider including education, specialty, office locations, languages spoken, hospital affiliations, and any legal actions.

Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) maintains a Quality Check tool that can be used by consumers to compare providers or health care facilities to determine whether they provide the quality of care the patient needs.

Hospital Compare was created through the efforts of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and organizations that represent hospitals, doctors, employers, accrediting organization, other federal agencies, and the public. The site provides standardized assessments of care to adult patients at some 4,200 hospitals across the U.S., based on valid, reliable measures shown to reflect quality of care.